Chapter 558: Successful Airdrop

Yu Sheng looked at the pure white dragon before him, sensing the subtle connection established through blood between them. He tried to find something different about this bond, but found nothing.

Bai Liqing, of course, had no idea what Yu Sheng was thinking, let alone the specifics of the 'blood grant.' She simply saw that he seemed lost in thought for a moment, and after a brief hesitation, she broke the silence: "Is the 'blood grant' over? What do we do next?"

Yu Sheng quickly pulled his scattered thoughts back together, steadied himself, and nodded to her. "Next... we charge again."

Aileen hugged Yu Sheng's head tightly. "I-I'm going with you this time!"

Yu Sheng hesitated, but before he could speak, the little puppet rushed on: "I can control things remotely from here, and most of my consciousness is in the mass-produced puppet network anyway. If something goes wrong on your end, I'll disconnect immediately... I just think you're unreliable alone. Besides, isn't that the Omen Goddess? Maybe I can help if I'm there, right..."

Yu Sheng turned his head and saw the little puppet staring at him with glittering eyes, her crimson orbs filled with nervousness—yet both cowardly and determined.

Not like the powerful and carefree golden-haired Aileen from three thousand seven hundred years ago, nor like the gentle and persistent Omen Goddess who descended in ignorance.

Just a little puppet living at No. 66 Wutong Road—one who looked fierce but was actually a scaredy-cat.

Yu Sheng nodded and patted Aileen's back. "Alright, let's go together. Just know when to run if something goes wrong."

Bai Liqing lowered her massive body, laying one enormous wing covered in tiny crystalline scales to the ground. She turned her head, her now inhuman vertical pupils fixed on Yu Sheng. "I can only take you to the area above that pile of 'divine corpse.' I hope you have a safe landing plan."

Yu Sheng laughed. "Don't worry, I'm sturdy. As long as a dragon doesn't land directly on top of me, I won't die easily from a fall."

"...Can you forget about that?"

"Ah, fine, fine." Yu Sheng waved dismissively, climbed up along her wing, and sat steadily on the broad back of the pure white dragon.

Then he looked into the distance. "Hu Li! Cover us for another charge!"

Seven or eight fox tails spouting propulsion flames and protective spiritual energy immediately shot into the air, followed by Bai Qie and Yan Ju flanking the dragon left and right as escort chickens.

Bai Liqing rose from the platform. Before taking off, she couldn't help but glance at the messy assortment of things flying beside her and still felt a bit awkward. "I never thought that when I flew again, it would be taking off alongside these things..."

Yu Sheng chuckled at that. "Speaking of which, we never imagined you could fly at all—let's go!"

Bai Liqing nodded slightly, spread her wings, and stepped forward. The platform trembled, and in the next second, the pure white dragon soared into the air!

To be honest, the takeoff was quite stable—which surprised Yu Sheng. He had been prepared for the first thing after takeoff to be an emergency landing.

Almost the moment Bai Liqing took off, the surging, writhing shadows in the temple ruins reacted immediately!

The threat posed by the dragon seemed to provoke those soulless shadows. The entire tide of black mud began to rapidly climb skyward, and countless phantom fragments of all sizes broke free from the black tide and flew into the air. Yu Sheng leaned out from the edge of the dragon's wing to look down, and for a moment, it felt as if the entire ground had "bulged," extending countless tentacles and spewing countless fragments to intercept them—a sight that made one's scalp tingle!

Bai Qie and Yan Ju instantly charged toward the black tide. Two dazzling lights, like clouds and rosy clouds falling to the ground, plunged into the darkness, tearing ravines through the shadows. At the same time, Bai Liqing began to accelerate again.

The massive remains of the divine corpse rapidly grew larger in their field of vision.

Unsettling fluctuations began to appear in the air around the divine corpse—a sign that rifts were about to form.

"Here it comes!" Yu Sheng immediately called out a warning.

"Got it—"

Bai Liqing's voice carried a strange tremor and resonance. Powerful force began to build within her. Yu Sheng saw a layer of hazy magical light form on the surface of the crystalline scales around him. Then he felt a jolt beneath him—the pure white dragon suddenly lifted her head, opened her massive maw toward the areas on the ground where ripples were forming.

A crystalline-dust breath like a blizzard of ice erupted. Countless tiny crystal fragments rained down like a storm across the black tide. Thousands of shards of 'Anti-Aileen Crystals' embedded deeply into the viscous shadows, immediately disrupting the dark rifts that had just begun to form. Even the nearby shadow tide showed signs of stagnation and shrinkage.

The little puppet, who had been clinging to Yu Sheng's shoulder, momentarily forgot about the whole 'Anti-Aileen Crystal' affair and began cheering excitedly: "Wow! This stuff works great!!"

Then she lowered her head and yelled at Bai Liqing, "Hey hey! What's the principle behind this? How do you store crystals in your body? Did you swallow them before departure? And how do you spit them out?"

Bai Liqing ignored the little thing, because her full attention was on the massive divine corpse in the ruins. But Aileen didn't stay quiet for even a second before blurting out again: "...So you ruminate!?"

Bai Liqing finally couldn't hold back. "Yu Sheng, she—"

"She's always like this, the busier it gets, the more she babbles," Yu Sheng said, casually grabbing the little puppet and covering her mouth. "You're lucky—at least you can't hear her when I cover her mouth. She can babble inside my head."

Bai Liqing said from the bottom of her heart, "You must usually be... quite burdened."

She had just made that comment when a sudden sense of unease surged within her!

Sure enough, that hill-like divine corpse underwent the same transformation as before—the edges of the twisted, piled remains instantly began to deform and writhe. Then, cracks appeared out of nowhere on the surface of the sticky shadow mass, and countless blood-red eyes emerged, madly crowding to the edges of the cracks, scanning the sky!

An immense noise and waves of dizziness struck abruptly, accompanied by a sinking, tearing sensation that threatened to dissolve one's very mind. Bai Liqing felt her body lurch downward, but in the next second, she realized she hadn't actually lost control of her body.

Amid the storm of spiritual contamination raging in her mind, another force—calm as death—had already wrapped around her consciousness. She watched those scarlet, frenzied eyes writhing and churning on the ground, her vision blurring, and then another vision burst into view—

She saw an endless wasteland. Under a gray sky, nameless tall grass spread across the land. The gently undulating earth and hills were covered with waves of grass;

She saw a grand bonfire blazing, surrounded by twelve solemn stone pillars, and a majestic black church standing in the wilderness between the bonfire and the hills;

She also saw a thin mist flowing around the church. From within came sounds like wind, or the echo of hymns. A giant crystalline tree grew in the church's courtyard, its branches blotting out the sky, its crown supporting the river of reincarnation—

The pure white dragon flew through this soul-realm. Her huge eyes reflected the scenery of both worlds simultaneously. She opened her eyes wide in surprise, and then saw a golden-haired female knight suddenly appear in her field of vision.

The golden-haired female knight smiled, surrounded by the figures of twelve Bronze Knights. Bai Liqing was startled, and then saw the golden-haired girl walk toward her through the air.

The girl raised her fist and punched the pure white dragon right on the nose.

Bai Liqing's main perspective instantly snapped back to reality—she was soaring over those countless frenzied scarlet eyes, and the ancient mechanism among the divine corpse remains was right in front of her.

The mental contamination in her mind had receded. Bai Liqing had no time to ponder what she had just seen. She hurriedly adjusted her flight posture and shouted to Yu Sheng on her back: "Hold tight! I'm descending! Don't fall off early!"

Yu Sheng panicked. On the dragon's back, there was no fur to grab like on Hu Li. All around him were smooth scales without a single protrusion. "Where am I supposed to hold?!"

Bai Liqing: "Figure it out!"

The next second, the pure white dragon began its dive toward the ancient mechanism.

The suppressed shadow tide had already resumed its writhing. Layers upon layers of black rifts were forming again. The dragon's back tilted sharply, the shaking of the dive forcing Yu Sheng to lower his body. In his panic, he found a slightly raised scale and unhesitatingly dug his fingers into the gap beneath it, holding on tightly to prevent himself from sliding off the dragon's back—all of this happened within just a few seconds.

Then, from the edge of the dragon's wing, he and Aileen saw the huge gap that Hu Li's tail missiles had blasted earlier.

"Right there!" Yu Sheng immediately released the scale, hugging Aileen tightly. "We're jumping—"

Upon hearing this, Bai Liqing tilted her body, folding one wing to leave an opening for her 'passengers' to jump.

Amid the little puppet's excited screams, Yu Sheng, holding Aileen, jumped without hesitation.

Bai Liqing, just before her body lost balance, dangerously managed to stabilize herself again. She pulled up sharply and accelerated out of the temple, quickly escaping the shadow tide that had once again gone berserk.

With a loud "BOOM," Yu Sheng landed heavily on the ground.

"Wow!" Aileen poked her head out from Yu Sheng's embrace, looking up at the massive mechanism operating before her—its three towering pillars and the cube structure constantly rotating and reassembling in the center—and let out a small gasp.

Yu Sheng took a while to stand up.

Because he had fractured some bones and needed a moment to recover.

Then his gaze, along with the little puppet's, fell upon the enormous mechanical device.

Three tower-like obelisks arranged in a triangle, and a floating cube that constantly deformed and reconfigured in the air—it looked completely different from the surrounding temple ruins, clearly not from the civilization of the Omen Goddess.

Who built this? And what principle did it operate on?

Around the mechanism were piles of shadows like mountains. The remains of the Omen Goddess surrounded the device like a small ring of hills, as if even in death, even after her main consciousness had been extinguished by 'fusion,' this surviving fragment still instinctively protected the 'boundary bridge.'

Yu Sheng placed Aileen on his shoulder and stepped toward the nearest pillar.

On the surrounding remains of the divine corpse, countless cracks of all sizes silently appeared. Countless blood-red eyes emerged from the cracks, staring fixedly at him.